A few months ago Roman Szmal came out with a pan set aimed at urban sketchers that was packaged in a smaller (and cuter) version of the usual metal tin. This is my review of that set.
I’ve been posting my old photos that I’ve had tagged as possible painting inspiration but had not gotten around to painting. (See also: 2024, 2023.) These include photos I considered not technically good enough as photographs to go on my Unsplash, but still with some seed of interest or inspiration. You are free to paint these, or I may come back to them someday!
Below, find 37 photos from 2022.
This month, I painted small, in keeping with my desire to make things manageable. My outdoor paintings were painted on a 3.5″x5″ Moleskin pocket sketchbook; my studio paintings this month were painted on my Cheap Joe’s going-out-of-business stock of 6″ square Kilimanjaro paper. Outdoor Paintings Thanks to Lynne for getting me to go to to … Read more
Earlier this year, when I decided to get more serious about urban sketching, I put together a small kit based on my expectations of what would work well. Now that I have some experience, let’s judge how I did! With particular emphasis on critiquing my palette choices, since they are what I obsess about the most.
In May, my art Discord decided to join together in a nebulous event that we dubbed the Maskerade. This is the month, we all decided, where we will finally learn to use masking fluid, also known as liquid frisket.
Edit: This post has been edited on June 7, 2025 to include more information about pans vs tubes and photos of student-grade Cotman substitutions.
I’m a member of Claire Giordano’s Adventure Art Academy, and I’m joining her Beginner/Foundations class starting June 12. Although a person who’s painted for four years and maintained a three-update-a-week watercolor blog for three of those years can probably not exactly be called a beginner, I still feel like a beginner in many ways – good and bad! When you’re chaotically self-taught, it’s always good to circle back to fundamentals, and my recent feelings of slump have had me yearning for structure and simplicity. I always learn a lot from Claire’s tips on water control, plein air shortcuts, and specific landscape elements, such as alpenglow.
The one aspect of painting where I don’t feel like a beginner is color mixing and pigment knowledge. Learning about pigments and paint options almost feels like a separate hobby, one where I’ve really dug in. I’d like to put that knowledge to work for my fellow students.
I have currently on a mission to become a legit urban sketcher! For a lot of reasons, but mostly because I want to capture the things I see on my travels, and I want to do so without suffering from a bad case of impostor syndrome.
Kazuo Kasai is one of my favorite contemporary watercolor artists to follow on Instagram (before I left Instagram), and he has amazing timelapse videos on Youtube. Even accounting for the sped-up video, he paints so fast, slapping down paint as if at random, yet it all comes together. I love his fresh, bold color and the way his paintings are so intensely seasonal: spring bursting with blossoms; summer full of sunlight and greenery; autumn exploding with fall color; and winter cold and serene.
I’ve often struggled to find the “perfect spring green” and this year, I think I figured out the secret: there is no perfect spring green because spring greens keep changing!
[Edited with new details Friday, May 23, 2025, at 6:30 AM EST. Thanks to the Mysterious V for important leads.] Joann’s Fabric has closed its doors, the end of an era. Despite getting some deep discounts on fabric and craft supplies last weekend, my partner, who sews, remains despondent: where to shop now? This is … Read more